[sane-devel] Lexmark X5250 All-In-One - Offer to Develop

[SPM]

I am interested in developing a backend for the Lexmark X5250
All-in-One printer/scanner/copier, and will need help getting started.

All research I have done to date indicates the following:

1.  Lexmark's "developer's kit"  (LDK 2.0) offers weak support for the
few units for which their sample code works.  The X5250 is one of the
supported devices, but I got the impression that it only works on
older versions of LINUX kernels.  (I am running Fedora Core 7)

2.  Use of LDK is not very intuitive and will take significant time to
use, with questionable results.

3.  Other parties, having tried to use LDK, appear to have had better
success reverse-engineering the unit in Windows and starting from
scratch on a new backend.  (example:
http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/sane-devel/2005-November/015399.html)

I haven't tried the LDK, but have read enough to believe writing a new
backend would be a more efficient use of my time.  I have 11 years
experience in the field as a programmer and am fluent in many
languages, but will be new to this process.  I would appreciate any
help / advice for getting started, especially regarding tools to use
for scanning Windows while running the printer, what language is used
for writing backends (C?), if there is a preferred IDE for
development, and how to connect to the CVS repository if/when I
develop anything of use.

Lexmark made a good unit (at least, compared to some of HP's more
pitiful offerings I've endured over the last 12 years); it's sad that
they should be so narrow-minded as to all but pay lip-service to the
LINUX community.  Apparently, they have yet to realize exactly how
large a community they are ostracizing.  I have no intention of buying
any product of theirs again, but would like to use my bad investment
to help others.

Sean P Murphy